Africa

A General Service (GSU) office gestures outside the burning Jomo Kenyatta international airport on Wednesday. A massive fire shut down Nairobi’s international airport today with flights diverted to regional cities as firefighters battled to put out the blaze in east Africa’s biggest transport hub.

A girl walks past campaign posters on the windows of a mud brick house in Gao, Mali, on Thursday. Mali’s presidential election is going ahead on Sunday despite logistical and technical lapses, including a voter roll that does not contain the names of tens of thousands of registered voters.

Women from a welcoming group wearing skirts and shawls with the face of US President Barack Obama prepare for him to depart from the Julius Nyerere airport, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on Tuesday, at the end of the final leg of his week-long visit to Africa. Mr Obama on Monday courted African business leaders and announced trade initiatives to open up East Africa’s markets to American businesses, as he sought to counter the rise of Chinese economic influence in the continent.

US president Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama look out from the door of no return while touring the House of Slaves, or Maison des Esclaves, at Goree Island off the coast of Dakar on Thursday. Mr Obama and his family toured the museum at the site where African slaves were held before going through the door and being shipped off the continent as slaves.

A member of the honour guard adjusts another’s collar as they prepare for the arrival of President Barack Obama at the presidential palace in Dakar, Senegal, on Thursday. Mr Obama arrived in Senegal on Wednesday night to begin a week-long trip to Africa, a three-country visit aimed at overcoming disappointment on the continent over the first black US president’s lack of engagement with continent during his first term.

Phaphama Nxumalo (left), 12, and Natasha Mbatha, 9, members of the Alexandra Trampoline Club, on Wednesday practise in an alleyway between apartment blocks in Johannesburg, South Africa. A township with a wide spectrum of housing types, including shacks and contemporary homes, Alexandra is situated next to the wealthy suburb of Sandton, laying bare post-apartheid South Africa’s vast gulf between wealth and poverty.

Two-month-old orphaned baby elephant Ajabu is given a dust bath by a keeper, at an event to mark World Environment Day at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust Elephant Orphanage in Nairobi, Kenya, on Wednesday. Trust founder Daphne Sheldrick said they are seeing an upsurge in orphaned elephants because of poaching across Africa.

Opposition supporters cheer as they clash with security forces in Lomé on Thursday. Authorities have banned planned opposition protests in Togo’s capital city this week after a crowd of students smashed windows and torched cars on May 21.

Women protest in traditional dress in Lome, Togo on Monday. The protests, set for three days this week, are against the arrest of opposition members. One of the opposition members arrested last week has allegedly died in police custody, according to local reports.

A woman carries her son as she stands with other women at a camp for internally displaced persons in al-Mazraq, in the northwestern Yemeni province of Hajja, on Monday. Thousands of the displaced who have fled fighting between Shia rebels and government forces in northwestern Yemen have yet to return to their villages three years after the fighting ended.

A protestor wearing a mask with the colours of the Kenyan flag participates in a demonstration against lawmakers’ salary demands outside the parliament buildings in the capital Nairobi on Tuesday. Kenyan police in riot gear fired teargas and water cannon in attempts to disperse about 200 protesters.

United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) goodwill ambassador and Chinese actress Li Bingbing (2nd R) dances with members of the Samburu tribe in the Samburu game reserve on Wednesday. Li Bingbing was on an official visit to the Samburu reserve in Kenya to highlight issues of Africa’s poaching crisis.

Yemeni al-Qaeda militants listen as a judge sentences them to jail for plotting attacks in Yemen at the Sana’a court. The court handed out jail sentences ranging between four and 10 years, on charges of forming an armed group to carry out attacks against military, government buildings and foreign interests in Yemen.

Supporters of Cissé Bacongo, candidate in the municipal elections in Koumassi, a popular district of Abidjan, demonstrate following partial, non-official results announcing the defeat of their leader. Ivorians turned out in low numbers for Sunday’s local elections, seen as a test of stability in the west African nation in a poll boycotted by former president Laurent Gbagbo’s party.